HERE is a reminder of what we have been saying about and to young people in recent years.

Never mind all the A-grades, those exams you passed really aren’t up to scratch, not like in our day. That course you just signed up to is rubbish and so is the so-called university you attend.

When you finish university, don’t expect a job but do watch out for a whopping bill from the state. If you ever manage to pay off that debt we have just saddled you with, don’t buy a house: we roundly screwed that up as well and houses are now far too expensive for the likes of you.

Don’t even think of running to a bank for help, because we mortgaged your future so the banks and their high-flying traders could carry on in just the same fashion; it turns out bankers’ bonuses do grow on trees.

If you do get a job, don’t even think about packing it in until you are at least 70: once you’ve finished off paying your debts, you will have to keep your elders and betters, you know, the ones who keep moaning about you, in the style to which they have become accustomed.

Is it any wonder students are revolting and rioting? If I wasn’t so middle-aged and past it, I might even join them. This isn’t to say they are correct about everything, but they are right to suspect that more fortunate generations are now making life difficult for them.

Our youngest is 17 and she is genuinely worried about the prospect of future student debt. Sadly, she won’t get a lot of extra financial help from me, seeing as I quite forgot to become a banker or a millionaire.

Is it fair for us to summon so many dark clouds over teenage horizons; and shouldn’t we stop to think about the messages we pass on to those younger than ourselves?

Most young people I meet strike me as generally marvellous: surprising, cranky and stubborn, just like the rest of just, but, yes, marvellous too. Sadly, the rioting few causing chaos in London, or giving the Prince of Wales a fright in his vintage Rolls, hand all the ammunition to those who love to carp and moan about the young. Some people are never happier than when a complaint is forming or foaming on their lips; so think before you give them the opportunity to condemn you for the crime of being young.

HERE is some further advice. Teaching might be the job for you. But please do remember that governments change the rules every other year – and then blame the teachers, once they’ve stopped blaming the students.

Should you end up teaching at a state school, successive governments will tinker and interfere with a job you clearly know nothing about, even though you do it every day; you will be at the breezy whim of whoever happens to be in charge (and who, you can guarantee, will never so much have muttered in front of a class, but knows everything there is to know about teaching).

This is especially so when the Conservatives have their turn, and a braying bunch of Eton, Westminster and Oxbridge types will tell you what to do, having earned the right by attending the most expensive schools in the country.

The latest coterie of Tories and their Lib-Dem hangers-on want all secondary schools to be measured against each other in English, maths, science, a foreign language and history or geography.

Did someone just turn the clock back to the 1950s when we weren’t looking? (possibly so, as Education Secretary Michael Gove is said to believe pupils should study Dryden, of all the dusty poets).

And, yes, hands up time, you will occasionally find your job dragged into the public arena by newspaper columnists who have also never so much as addressed a class (apart, in my case, from one primary school intake and a bunch of less than inquisitive sixth-formers).